The Dream that led to Man and His Symbols



From Claire Dunne’s Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul, page 209:

Man and His Symbols, Jung’s last work, had a typical birth. The highly successful Freeman interview prompted a publisher’s request for a book of Jung’s “more important and basic ideas,” this time “for the people in the market place.” No, said eighty-three year old Jung. He had never tried to popularize his work; anyway he was “old and rather tired.” Then he had a dream, which he told to John Freeman:

He dreamed that, instead of sitting in his study and talking to the great doctors and psychiatrists who used to call on him from all over the world, he was standing in a public place and addressing a multitude of people who were listening to him with rapt attention and understanding what he said.

Inner instinct was heeded and the publisher’s second request was accepted. Jung’s contribution to the book was completed only ten days before his death, “his legacy to the broad reading public,” wrote John Freeman,” from one of the great doctors of all time and one of the great thinkers of this century.”

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